While e-commerce sales have been growing, year-to-year declines in conversion and add-to-cart rates are continuing. Retailers need to pay greater attention to personalization and relevant product recommendations to combat these declines and ensure that they remain successful.
The express parcels industry is coming under pressure as never before. Fundamental changes in the market structure, caused by e-retailing, technological disruption and macro-economic upheaval, have created opportunities and challenges for express companies in equal measure.
Retailers are working hard to transform their supply chains to a customer-centric, omnichannel model, but 80 percent are not prepared for the magnitude of change required, according to HRC Advisory (HRC), a retail advisory firm and unit of Hilco Global.
Walmart is out to improve the quality of product information available to consumers on the internet - particularly from social media sources - with a supplier data collection program that will launch later this year.
Online retailers in key African markets are stepping up efforts to prevent fraud and gain the trust of consumers in order to encourage online payments in a region where, because of the vast numbers of mobile users, the potential for e-commerce is enormous.
In a report projecting $780bn in United States B2B e-commerce sales this year and $1.132tr by 2020, Forrester Research encourages companies to get to work now on a digital strategy for dealing with customers.
Less than half of retailers currently offer order fulfillment solutions
like in-store pickup or ship-from-store to consumers, but 2015 provides a chance to improve their business operations and invest in technologies that will improve the bottom line and create unforgettable customer shopping experiences in all channels. Shopatron, a provider of cloud-based distributed order management solutions, says retailers must view 2015 as the year when omnichannel commitment becomes the priority.
Studies document that innovation in engineering and production works best when the two disciplines are contiguous. Pairing the two was problematic for one company until an online marketplace came to the rescue.